Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey everybody. How you doing?
[00:00:04] I heard there is a flood coming.
[00:00:06] Have you heard these reports?
[00:00:08] Evidently it's crossing America and there's a great flood coming. So glad you're at church.
[00:00:19] We finished a relationship series and what I was planning on doing was going into like a tough question. Like let's answer some of the toughest questions that you hear and let's do a series on it. And I was so ready. But the relationship series, it opened up so much and I had so many questions and so many lunches and dinners and late nights. And I think at the heartbeat of when you truly care about relationships, you're in desperate need of forgiveness.
[00:00:59] Sometimes you don't know how to do it.
[00:01:02] And I'm preaching tonight and for the next couple weeks on forgiveness.
[00:01:09] And when I started studying for this, I'm telling you, I thought, I kind of knew. I thought I was like, I am your girl in this.
[00:01:18] But as I was studying, my heart has just been opened to deeper and deeper understanding and now I feel super inadequate.
[00:01:26] I should be so real with you. I feel so inadequate. I am using this book from Timothy Keller, who is just a great preacher, a great theologian and I highly recommend it. So a lot of my resources are going to be coming from this book. Timothy Keller, Forgive.
[00:01:46] And my dad and I, we do a podcast and that comes out the first Monday of every month. So we have a two part series on forgiveness coming out. So the first one comes out this Monday and it kind of sets the framework. And then the second podcast is going to come out.
[00:02:05] What's next month? May. The first Monday in May. And it's the cost of forgiveness. And it might be one of our, my favorite podcasts I've ever done with my dad.
[00:02:16] And so I highly recommend it. You can listen to it anywhere. Podcasts are, you can get it on our website or our app, but it's a great resource.
[00:02:27] I also listen to a sermon series by. I like to give you my resources up front. Can you tell? I'm always like, here's how I learned.
[00:02:36] I listened to an awesome sermon series called the Grudge by Craig Groeschel and I highly recommend that too. If forgiveness is something that you just need some extra tools.
[00:02:50] And here's the deal, when we talk about forgiveness, for some of us it's fine, but for others of us, it reminds us of our deepest wounds. And so tonight I wanna talk gently, but I wanna talk as like followers of Jesus Christ in this. So I wanna be gentle, but I wanna be bold. Okay.
[00:03:17] And I want you to know that, like, from the depth of my heart, I'm in this with you. And forgiveness is. It's one of those things where, man, I just wanna honor God in it. I've gotten so wrong in my life.
[00:03:32] I've nailed it a time or two, okay?
[00:03:36] But at the end of the day, I want who Christ is to rub off on me. I want to be more and more like him. I want, when people see my life, for it to be a reflection of his goodness and his beauty and his love and his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness. And so the more I hang around him, the more I want to be like him. And I think that's going to be the heartbeat of what this sermon is tonight.
[00:04:06] So let's pray, and then we'll get started.
[00:04:14] I love the song Amazing Grace. Father, when they said that last line, it reaches into the depth of my soul.
[00:04:23] Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
[00:04:27] I thank you that you are a God that is like none.
[00:04:33] You are a God that came down and you took true justice. You took the wrath, you took the punishment, and you gave us the grace.
[00:04:48] And now, as we delve into hard things, I pray that your grace will reach us right here, right now.
[00:04:56] I pray for those of us who have deep wounds.
[00:05:00] They haven't healed yet. They're wounds and they're open, and this might be incredibly hard.
[00:05:10] Will your spirit speak?
[00:05:14] Can it be less of me and more of you? Tonight, I pray for those of us who just want to get better and want to be more like you and do the approach of you every time. Will you give us grace to keep trying and keep going?
[00:05:31] In your mighty son's name I pray. Amen.
[00:05:35] So in this grudge series, Craig Groeschel, he opens up one of his sermons and he says, who betrayed you?
[00:05:47] Who hurt you?
[00:05:51] Maybe it was a mom or a dad, that all you ever wanted was their affirmation and love, but they made you feel like you could never measure up.
[00:06:07] Maybe it was from childhood and it was a bully who picked on you time and time and time again. And they defined a huge piece of how you defined yourself.
[00:06:20] Maybe it was a relationship that you deeply trusted, but you were betrayed at some point. Every single one of us know the reality of being betrayed.
[00:06:42] At some point, every single one of us have had hurts that cut deep.
[00:06:49] And so when we talk about forgiveness, I think it's easy to talk about the little things in life, like the little offenses.
[00:06:58] But we're not going there tonight. Tonight we're going deep.
[00:07:04] And if I'm honest, I think that one of the things in my life, every time I think about forgiveness, it just brings the wounds up, and it feels like sometimes like a gut punch, and it feels like I don't want to go back there. I don't want to think about those things.
[00:07:26] But I think what that reveals then is it's not scarred over yet. It's still a wound.
[00:07:34] And my hope is that as we seek Jesus, as we seek the wisdom of his words, of his life, of what he represents, we try his approach.
[00:07:50] And one of the hardest things in this sermon was I couldn't get over the deepest offenses.
[00:07:57] So I was trying to think about things that we all go through, and it's every day. But my problem with forgiveness was, what about the really, really bad stuff?
[00:08:11] And I couldn't get over it. So, like, everything I'd study, I'd try to just be, like, normal and not go to the extremes. But the problem was the extreme was screaming at me.
[00:08:21] And so, like, I understand forgiveness. I can totally grab it in my head. But what's very hard for me is when there is a deep injustice, how do you forgive?
[00:08:41] Like, when there is abuse to children, when there is.
[00:08:48] When there's injustice, I want to be careful because there's some kids in the room. So you'll have to read my mind tonight a little bit.
[00:09:01] How do you forgive?
[00:09:04] How can God be a God of love, mercy, and grace, but also a God of justice?
[00:09:12] And it consumed my mind, and I'm going to get over to it in the next couple of weeks. But at the heartbeat of this, Jesus told a parable.
[00:09:28] And you find this parable in Matthew 18.
[00:09:32] My Selah gave me a new pair of glasses here today. So it's the new style.
[00:09:39] And in Matthew 18, we're going to start at verse 23. So Peter is there, and he's saying to Jesus, like, how many times do we really have to forgive? Like, how many times do we honestly have to forgive? And Peter being bold is like, how about seven? Like, if someone messes with us seven times, can we call that a day? Because it would have been very common for the Jewish rabbis to teach them that three times, someone does you dirty three times, brush your hands of it, call it a day, move on. But Jesus is. He's trying to say something bigger here. And so Peter's like, how about seven, right? It's a perfect number. It's whole. I'm gonna go a little above and double it and add one, because it's Peter. And Jesus says, no, Listen, we're not gonna count how many times people offend us. We're gonna be forgivers. And he tells this parable.
[00:10:34] It says, therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servant.
[00:10:42] When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents.
[00:10:48] The idea of this is 10,000 talents. My Bible notes that it will been 200,000 years wages, okay? So when Jesus said that number, it would have been like, oh, you can't pay that back. That's ridiculous. That's insane. And so the king brings a servant. The servant owes him an insane amount that can never be paid back.
[00:11:14] And the king says, since you cannot pay this, I'm gonna order you to be sold with your wife and your children and all that you have, and the payment will be made to me.
[00:11:27] It was very common back then that if you had a debt, that you would be sold to pay off the debt. It was a common thing, so people wouldn't have winced at that.
[00:11:40] But the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.
[00:11:47] And out of pity for him, the master of the servant released him and he forgave him.
[00:11:56] But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii, which would be the equivalent of like a couple months wages.
[00:12:07] And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay what you owe.
[00:12:14] So his fellow servant fell down and he pleaded with him, having patience with me. Have patience with me, and I will pay you.
[00:12:22] He refused and went and put him in prison until he finished paying off the debt.
[00:12:29] When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.
[00:12:37] Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all the debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?
[00:12:52] And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debts.
[00:12:59] This is a tough verse. And this is how it ends. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
[00:13:11] We're gonna dissect this all. Don't quit on me, okay?
[00:13:16] I wanna define first what forgiveness is not. Because I think we need to define what it isn't and what it is so. So that we can move forward in healthy thinking together at the same time, because I think forgiveness has Been used and wielded as a weapon, especially in broken churches. And it's evil, it's not right, and it's not of God. So I wanna start there. So one thing that we are gonna start with is what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not a justification that what this person did was okay. I think too often people will pull up scripture and try to say, you gotta forgive. The Bible tells you to forgive. Jesus is not gonna forgive you unless you forgive others. Therefore, you forgive and you forget.
[00:14:08] And that's not reality. In fact, the whole entire Bible is this story of great redemption, great forgiveness, great great love. But nowhere in there does it say forgive and forget. It's a lie.
[00:14:25] It's not what God wants of us.
[00:14:30] And so to justify and pretend like a wrong is okay and doesn't hurt is not forgiveness. Do I have notes on this? Could you pull them up?
[00:14:47] Okay, next one. Perfect. Okay.
[00:14:50] This is where it can get unhealthy in the breakdown is we sweep it under the rug and you keep it hidden.
[00:14:57] So sometimes, out of the sake of forgiveness, people will ask you not to say anything, to save face for those that hurt you or abuse you or whatever it might be or have done wrong to you.
[00:15:10] And so this idea of we're gonna sweep it under the rug and we're gonna act like it never happened and we're gonna keep it hidden. That's not forgiveness.
[00:15:18] The next one is being a doormat. I hear this a lot of, like, I don't want to be a doormat. Because in today's society, forgiveness really is weak.
[00:15:30] I mean, if we listen to culture, it's weak.
[00:15:34] What culture tells you is if you are going to be strong, you cancel. If you're going to be strong, you move on. You don't deal with that, you move on because you are strong, you're independent, whatever it might be. Our culture teaches us that forgiveness is weak.
[00:15:52] And so what happens then is we get these subliminal messages that it's weak. And now when something's happened to us that you want to forgive, you feel like, but I don't want to be a doormat. So what do I do? I don't want them to walk all over me. So how do. How do I forgive but be strong at the same time?
[00:16:10] And I want to say that the strongest people in my life or that I've ever known have the approach of forgiveness.
[00:16:19] Jesus Christ had the approach of forgiveness. And when you read his story, there's not an ounce of weakness in it. It is strength, and it's dignified, and there's nobility in it.
[00:16:32] The next thing I want to say is forgiveness. It's not fair.
[00:16:37] And I think we so often want things to be fair. You know what I'm saying? I love the verse that says, an eye for an eye. Hallelujah, Give me some justice. You know what I'm saying? Like, I love that side of, like, I want it to be fair. But the problem is forgiveness is not fair. Fair, it is. It comes at a cost.
[00:17:03] When you. When you forgive, you are. You are taking the cost.
[00:17:09] It's like when a lamp gets broken. Someone came to your house, they knocked the lamp over, it's broken. And you're like, no problem. Forget about it. I totally forgive you. Don't even think twice. But the problem is, you're either gonna live in the dark because the lamp is broken, or you're gonna go buy a new lamp, and the cost is on you.
[00:17:28] And so when you think of being fair, forgiveness is not.
[00:17:38] So what is forgiveness?
[00:17:42] Forgiveness is.
[00:17:45] It's a partnership with God.
[00:17:48] And when you partner with God, forgiveness is a releasing.
[00:17:54] It's a complete letting go.
[00:17:57] It's giving up the right to get revenge and retaliate.
[00:18:04] And this isn't natural for us. Our natural urge is retaliation.
[00:18:11] At least our desire sometimes.
[00:18:14] And now here's where I want to differentiate that. When.
[00:18:19] When illegal things have happened to you, forgiveness is not. Not seeking justice for that person.
[00:18:31] When something hard and heavy has happened and it's illegal. I want you to know that God is a God of justice.
[00:18:40] He is a God of justice. In fact, when we look at his life, his entire life was sent for us.
[00:18:49] His entire life was because we are a broken humanity. Every single one of us were broken. We fall short of God's glory and what he has for us. We make mistakes. Every single one of us have hurt people in our lives. Every one of us.
[00:19:08] And God came and he came to the earth because what happens is he loves us.
[00:19:15] And he wants reconciliation, but he also wants justice.
[00:19:23] My daughter and I, Taylor and Aunt and Jacob, we watched a documentary last night. It was horrible. Highly. Don't recommend. We've been watching these murder documentaries that are like. Tay and I were freaked out. We went to every window, locked it up. We locked the house tight last night. Okay, and what was it called?
[00:19:42] Gone Girls. It was called Gone Girls. This documentary, it was horrible. Don't recommend it. And in it, all these girls are.
[00:19:55] And this man.
[00:19:58] Kids in the room. This is such a bad sermon for that. I'm so Sorry.
[00:20:04] This man gets like hides it for years and years and years and years. And it's this unsolved mystery and it's unsolved mystery and all that. These women, the victims, their mom and their sisters and their dads and their family, all they want is justice for their girls.
[00:20:23] And what happens if they catch this man who did all the wrong? And then the judge says, you're going to get six months.
[00:20:38] None of us would say that is a loving judge.
[00:20:42] None of us would say that is beautiful and merciful and you are a good judge.
[00:20:52] None of us would say that because we know that there is a cost. We know that when something bad happens, it's all we want. Justice. And that's not bad, that's not wrong. I think we're hardwired for that.
[00:21:09] And I think when we look at how we want justice, that's where forgiveness comes in.
[00:21:19] When I want ill and I want pain and suffering and the same things that happen to me to happen to them, when I want vindication because I'm resentful and I'm bitter, that's where we have to start to look at ourselves. Am I representing God? Well? Am I representing God? Well, when you look at forgiveness, when you're giving up the right to retaliate and you say, okay, God is a God of justice. And because he's a God of justice, the pain and the suffering of this world, they had to be made right. And so he came from heaven to earth to take the punishment on himself.
[00:22:07] There is no other God in any religion that would even come close to this.
[00:22:15] There is no God in any other religion that says, I need justice, but because of my great love, I will step in for them.
[00:22:26] And when justice was required, he stepped in for us.
[00:22:32] And as we look at this story, the whole idea of this parable is the king showed forgiveness and the hope is that something would rub off on the servant.
[00:22:45] But when the servant goes out, nothing has affected his heart, nothing's changed within him.
[00:22:54] And so when he goes to get his repayment, there's no grace, there's no forgiveness, there's no love.
[00:23:06] And the whole thing comes together in verse 33.
[00:23:11] It says, and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I have had mercy on you?
[00:23:20] I wanna look at what the king did here because there's four things that if we can pull out, it's gonna show us how. How do we forgive? We start with why we forgive. Because God forgave us.
[00:23:35] And because God forgave us, it should Affect my heart.
[00:23:41] It should change me. It should make him rub off on me. It should make me want to live different than everybody and anything. And so once I have been affected and touched by God, that mercy and that grace, it should change me from the inside out. And I don't want to just be a person that receives grace. Receives grace, Receives grace. What happens is when we get it right, we receive the grace and then it works inside of us and it flows. Flows from us. Church.
[00:24:11] And so let's look at what the King did. Well, he did it so well.
[00:24:17] The first thing that the king did was he brought the servant to him.
[00:24:26] When we think about forgiveness, the very first thing we need to do is address that there's a problem.
[00:24:34] I think too often we either cancel, we either underplay it or we hide it. And so the King brought him to him.
[00:24:45] And something beautiful. When we are living in the light of Jesus Christ, God is light. In him, there is no darkness.
[00:24:54] And so the light of God shines within us. And then we want to bring things to the surface. That man I want healed. I don't want to hide this anymore. I don't want this to come between us. And we put it on the table.
[00:25:07] We put it on the table. And if you are the one who has been hurt, then you say how you've been hurt, what happened, and how it's making you feel.
[00:25:17] And you don't sweep it under the rug, you don't justify it. You just. You're real about it and you put it on the table. He brought the man before him so that they could have a conversation.
[00:25:28] And so for some of you, that's gonna make total sense.
[00:25:33] You gotta talk to whoever it is and you gotta just put it on the table, be honest and how does it make you feel for others of you, maybe the person has passed away or maybe it's really not safe and there's things that it's just not gonna be healthy. And so for you, putting it on the table might be talking to a trusted somebody.
[00:25:56] For you, putting it on the table might be talking to a counselor to start to really work through this.
[00:26:07] The next thing that, ugh, the worst, but the most beautiful. The king, he took pity on the man.
[00:26:19] You know, when we are wronged, it's so easy for the person that wronged us for their full personality to be the thing that they did.
[00:26:30] So let's say someone, a friend, lied to you.
[00:26:34] Well, now they're a liar, right? That's how we define them. That's who they Are, let's say you've been cheated on. Well, now they are a cheater and it becomes their whole personality. And what happens is, when we're trying to forgive and live in the kind of way that honors God, when we really make people a caricature of just their wrong, we're not living in truth.
[00:27:01] My husband and I, we've had a lot to forgive each other for. And if I only make him the thing that he did wrong, I'm lying to myself.
[00:27:11] He's an awesome man. He's funny, he's gorgeous, he's handsome, he's smart, he's a hard worker. There's things about him that are more than just the wrong.
[00:27:26] When a friend has hurt me and I need to forgive and I need to figure it out, I can't make them just a caricature of the wrong. I gotta see past it and I gotta try to put myself in their shoes now. Because I could only go to the extremes. Here I go again. I'm gonna go to the extreme in this one because if we go to the extreme, I feel like you can do anything.
[00:27:53] I read. My sister Katie, she sent me a TED Talk on forgiveness. And it was a woman who. Her brother and mother were murdered by a young boy that was a friend of the brother.
[00:28:08] And the mother took him into her home and she wanted to make sure he was well fed. And they took good care of this little boy. But he was troubled. And during Christmas time, he broke into their house and he stole some things. But the one boy was asleep on the couch. Her brother was asleep on the couch. And he did what he did because there's little ears. And he left. But he forgot his coat. So he came back in and the mother was there. And so he did that.
[00:28:43] And this girl could not forgive.
[00:28:48] She couldn't forgive.
[00:28:52] It was like an impossible task to ask her to forgive. And so what she did was she started diving deep into like his prison number and into forgiveness and trying to learn more about this young boy because to her, all he was was a murderer.
[00:29:08] And when she looked up his number, she saw the prison he was in. And the prison that he was in was like one of the worst rated prisons where kind of the worst of the worst went. And he would be locked in a room.
[00:29:23] I really should have made sure kids weren't in here.
[00:29:28] It's not just you. So I.
[00:29:33] Needless to say, she put herself in this young boy's shoes. For the first time in her life, she realized that he was more than just that. That he was a young boy who was deeply troubled, but he was a human.
[00:29:50] And the first thing that started to happen was the hard shell of resentment started to break open.
[00:29:59] Can you see, when we forgive and you don't make them the full sum of their wrong, that something starts to soften.
[00:30:10] The next thing that this king did was he released him, he let him go.
[00:30:17] And this is the full definition of forgiveness. You release, you, you let them go, they don't owe you anymore.
[00:30:28] But I want to give some tangibles on how you can practice this idea of release. Because what happens is I think a lot of us want to forgive, a lot of us just don't know how. And the hurt keeps coming back and we're triggered and something happens or the offense happens again. And now you're like doubly triggered. So it's like, how do you do this? How, how do you release?
[00:30:53] And the idea of forgiveness in this is forgiveness is a promise to yourself that you don't keep bringing it up. Because what happens is when you've been wronged, you replay it in your head over and over and over again.
[00:31:10] And so the offense happened, but now you're continuing to abuse yourself, man. You're continuing to play the tape over and over and over in your head. And so there's no healing, it's more wounding. And so part of releasing is a promise to yourself that I'm not gonna play the tape over and over and over again. When it pops up, I'm gonna say to God, God, I am releasing this to you. I surrender this to you.
[00:31:44] What else happens is sometimes we feel like because someone hurt us now they owe us. Can I get an amen?
[00:31:53] When someone hurt us now, we are in control and we will make them pay. Right now I'm gonna say the little things that are gonna demand better behavior. Because I'm in control.
[00:32:06] And so releasing is saying, I'm not in control, I am not owed, I am not demand.
[00:32:13] I'm not gonna be self righteous where I now am. Somehow so much better.
[00:32:19] Because I think we can compare our sins. I think we can say, I would never do that. But what happens is your sin's just a different flavor, okay? And it tastes just as sweet to you.
[00:32:33] It's just a different flavor.
[00:32:38] Something that we need to release is being, avoiding and being cold.
[00:32:47] I heard a woman tell a story of her father was verbally abusive to her all her life. And she, when she got old enough, she was like, I'm done with this. I'm not letting him abuse me anymore. And she didn't want the relationship with her dad to end, but she wanted to put some faith, firm boundaries, because she's an adult and she doesn't have to take the verbal abuse.
[00:33:15] So she wanted to honor her dad and love him well, because she wanted to live with no regrets. So what she did was she set up a weekly phone call, and she said, I really want to try to make this relationship work. And to do that, I'm going to call you at the same time every week, but I will not allow you to. To be abusive to me. So the second you start to be mean or go in an area that I don't want to go in because it's not healthy, I'm gonna hang up the phone. It doesn't mean I don't love you. It doesn't mean I'm not gonna call you next week. It just means I'm not gonna allow you to do it to me. And through this, the father started to learn what felt abusive to the daughter. And the daughter got a relationship with her dad. And. And so sometimes forgiveness looks like really healthy boundaries. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, don't let the relationship totally break. God wants reconciliation. As far as it's up to you.
[00:34:20] I understand that you can't control other people. I understand that if they keep doing the crazy behavior, there's a reality that the relationship's gonna look very different. But if it. There's a verse in Romans that. It said, as far as it's up to you, live in peace with everyone.
[00:34:39] As much as you can control it, live in peace.
[00:34:44] And so what can reconciliation look like with healthy boundaries?
[00:34:51] The next thing is, I'm not gonna talk to other people about this. Have you ever known someone to tell you how terrible other people are, and then they tell everyone how terrible that person is? And so it's like. It's not their way of, like, healing. It's their way of damaging that person's reputation. It's their way of not taking forgiveness. It's their way of hurting still and carrying it with them. And they don't want what's best for the other person. They want revenge.
[00:35:34] And so what you can do is have trusted people you talk to, talk to trusted people, but not everybody.
[00:35:43] Forgiveness is a promise that you keep by saying, I'm not going to keep bringing this up. I'm going to release it. I'm going to let it go.
[00:35:57] And then the last thing is this idea of forgive.
[00:36:03] I think a lot of us feel like forgiveness is an emotion, and I got to feel it.
[00:36:10] But at the end of the day, that's not true. Forgiveness is not an emotion. It's a choice.
[00:36:16] And so we choose to forgive. We choose to release long before you'll ever feel it.
[00:36:25] And this is part of the cost.
[00:36:28] This is part of the cost that we carry in forgiving is I'm choosing to not retaliate. I'm choosing that even when I want to, I will not.
[00:36:40] And there's a cost in that.
[00:36:43] And so when we say that at the end of the day to truly forgive, it's not an emotion. I don't always feel it, but I'm going to choose it.
[00:36:56] And day by day, I'm going to offer it. And I'm going to seek God because He is my partner. I'm going to seek God because if I can just be so honest with you, I've never fallen more in love with God than when I was at my very lowest.
[00:37:12] I've never learned to love him and cherish him and value him and seek the friendship and what he has to offer. In my good days, I found it. In my lowest days, I found it when I was feeling betrayed. I found it when I was feeling lost. I found it when my heart was broken. I found the love of God in a way I never thought possible.
[00:37:38] I found a partnership. I found a trust and a faithfulness. And so what happens is you need faith for forgiveness.
[00:37:51] And in trusting God in our lowest times, over and over and over again, it's this lifeline of faith that even though people hurt me and even though people disappoint me, God never has.
[00:38:05] Even though my life has been hurt or something has happened in the past, that does not define me. I am defined by the love and the beauty of Jesus Christ.
[00:38:14] Even when I struggle to really understand forgiveness because it's all too much, my hope is that there is freedom for me on the other side.
[00:38:26] Why would God ask us to forgive? He asks us to forgive because he loves you deeply. And when you forgive, it doesn't always let the person out or let them go. It doesn't always hit the way you want it to. But when you forgive, it always releases you of a prison.
[00:38:47] It releases you of a prison of resentment, of bitterness, of hurt, of being stuck in a pain. And when you start to forgive, you crawl out. And you see that on the other side of this pain, there is beauty. There is a lesson to be learned. There is something that God will use inside of you, that God will never waste our pain that's one of the beauties that you see in scripture. He doesn't waste your pain. It is used in some way somehow, because God works all things together for the good of those who love him.
[00:39:24] And when you seek God with all your heart, when you look at this king, who really is a representation of God, and you say, okay, I'm gonna bring it up. I'm gonna put it on the table.
[00:39:39] I'm gonna put myself in their shoes. And they're not gonna just be one.
[00:39:44] One definition. They are human.
[00:39:51] When you look at it and you say, okay, I'm gonna daily try to find ways to release this. I'm daily. I'm choosing this because I'm gonna release it. And I'm not gonna replay it over and over in my head, but I'm gonna let it go.
[00:40:04] I'm gonna seek help, and I'm gonna. And I'm gonna try my hardest. But at the end of the day, my choice is to forgive. Because God is a God of justice. God says, vengeance is mine.
[00:40:18] And when I trust in God with all my heart and all my soul, then I know that he will work together all things for my good.
[00:40:27] And I know that I can trust him in my deepest pains. I know that he is a God that is faithful.
[00:40:33] And so forgiveness is.
[00:40:36] It's not easy.
[00:40:40] When you look at the big hurts and the small hurts, it all comes down as the love of God affected you.
[00:40:55] Has it touched your life in the kind of way that makes you live different because of it?
[00:41:06] What about when you can't forgive yourself?
[00:41:13] If that's where you're at? I want you to join us for part two next time at CC midweek. Let's pray.
[00:41:22] Dear Heavenly Father, I so badly want freedom for people.
[00:41:31] I so badly want them to know the goodness of who you are in the deepest moments of pain and forgiveness, Father.
[00:41:41] So I ask that your Holy Spirit whisper to those who need it most.
[00:41:47] I pray that your spirit will guide in all truth, in all wisdom.
[00:41:53] I pray that we will know that you are our advocate, that you fight for us, Father.
[00:42:01] And I pray that we will be women and men that seek you heart and soul.
[00:42:09] I pray that we will love at the good king here in this parable and not be like the servant who was so graciously given something and then went out and wasn't changed by it.
[00:42:25] I pray that you will change and stir up a heart of something bigger and better, something more noble, something more beautiful, and help us live under this beauty and dignity that Jesus Christ offers in your Son's name I pray.
[00:42:43] I forgot one thing.
[00:42:45] Is it too late?
[00:42:49] This verse ends by saying so also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. There's a lot of scripture that it looks like this where if you don't forgive, God's not going to forgive you. And surface level looking at it can make you feel like then I'm responsible. If I forgive, then God will forgive me. But that's not the parable of this story.
[00:43:20] The heartbeat of this story is that your heart is affected and changed. God is a God of mercy. Our forgiveness is only dependent on divine mercy.
[00:43:34] And this is a story of the heart.
[00:43:38] And the heart needs to be touched and affected and changed by Jesus Christ.
[00:43:45] I'll see you next time guys.
